Qualla: Great Laxey Mine

Great Laxey Mine: Introduction

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. It weighs 118 kilograms. The composite cubo-octahedron of galena - lead sulphide, PbS - measures 25 centimetres on each side, an almost perfect cube of metallic grey crystal. It is the largest sulphide crystal ever recorded, by volume and by mass, and it sits on permanent display in the geology gallery of the Natural History Museum in London. It came out of the Great Laxey Mine on the Isle of Man, a working that descended more than 2,200 feet through three shafts - the Welsh Shaft, the 's Shaft, and the Engine Shaft - into the hillside above Laxey village. That crystal is what the mine is best known for now. For a hundred and forty years, the mine was known for something else: lead, silver, and the lives of the men who went down to find them.

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Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Laxey Mine: Deep Roots

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Finn Bjorklid, Public domain. The Isle of Man has been a mineral province for a very long time. Copper was mined at Bradda Head as far back as the 13th century, when Harald, King of Mann from 1237 to 1248, granted a charter under which the monks of Furness Abbey held working rights. Later that century the Ear...

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Image: Finn Bjorklid | Public domain

Great Laxey Mine: Boom

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joseph Mischyshyn, CC BY-SA 2.0. Both the Laxey and Foxdale mines closed in 1819 and reopened within four years. A Westmorland man secured the Laxey lease from George Murray, 6th Duke of Atholl. Both mines then boomed, and the success at Laxey triggered largely futile metal-searching expeditions all over the isl...

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Image: Joseph Mischyshyn | CC BY-SA 2.0

Great Laxey Mine: The Wheel and the Water

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Smurrayinchester assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. The deeper the mine went, the more water it took on. There is no coal on the Isle of Man, so steam pumping was impractical. The solution was the Laxey Wheel, named Lady Isabella after the wife of Lieutenant Governor Sir Charles Hope. Built in 1854, the wheel could lift 250 imperi...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Smurrayinchester assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Great Laxey Mine: The Fire and the Flood

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Francis Southward, CC BY 3.0. On Saturday 19 March 1904, fire broke out in the Welsh Shaft about ten fathoms below the surface. The mine's ventilation system worked; all men were evacuated in under thirty minutes and the fire was extinguished without fatalities. The incident carried particular weight because ...

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Image: Francis Southward | CC BY 3.0

Great Laxey Mine: Closure and Memory

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrew Abbott, CC BY-SA 2.0. The mine never fully recovered. By the 1900s the global lead price was falling and the cost of keeping the mine dry was rising. Many of the miners had already left, emigrating to South Africa, Australia, and the United States to find work in newer fields. Rumours of closure began...

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Image: Andrew Abbott | CC BY-SA 2.0